


same old sin

by thomaven (Entr0py)



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Canon Compliant, Introspection, M/M, Minor Character Death, Missing Scene, Multi, War, enemies to.... acquaintances, i just like. tsoas lifelike structure and sometimes how, i. guess?, things happen that mean something but at the same time change nothing and i guess this is that, this is just me at 2am being like. but what HO! parallels! and uhhh i wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 11:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18193760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entr0py/pseuds/thomaven
Summary: Patroclus encounters thephiltatosof a soldier Achilles has killed. He considers its meaning.





	same old sin

The Trojan arrives following bloodshed.

There is always death in war, but  _ bloodshed _ : that kind of carnage is exclusively Achilles. As usual he had darted back and forth, killing any man who came near me. One slammed his shield into my side and tried to come in on the other with their sword, but Achilles sliced off his hand and then his neck with cool efficiency. He touched my hand and then was distracted by a scuffle farther down, leaving me where I am now, with a Trojan approaching me. He draws his sword, sparkling in the sun. “Move, Greek,” he says.

I aim my sword at him, raising my chin.

He only bares his teeth at me. “Move,” he orders again, his eyes flashing. “I am not afraid to kill you.”

I lick my lips and focus on keeping myself steady. He is a threat, all right, although I have no idea he wants with me. He looks sharp and pointed and _ harsh _ . I summon Achilles’ neverending wealth of confidence. “You should be,” I say coolly. I square my shoulders and take a short step back, but I don’t lower my sword. I only keep it steady for when he eventually decides he’s tired of this game. 

“As brutish as every Greek,” he sneers. 

I tilt my head. “You approached and threatened  _ me _ , but I am the brute,” I say, keeping my voice steady where my hands cannot be. 

His eyes fall upon my trembling sword and he seems to force a smirk. “You are worse than a brute, then.” He is tense, wired. His helmet casts deep and jagged shadows over a stormy face. He tilts his head up and the sun casts light onto deep eyes the color of wine-dark sea, rimmed red. As if he were weeping. Strange.

“What do you shed tears for?” I ask.

The reaction is instantaneous. His whole body goes strained, and he jerks away from me as if burned. “Fuck off,” he seethes. His eyes give him away when he finally looks down at my feet and a tidal wave of emotions seem to rush through him. I follow his gaze.

I curse softly.

There’s a soldier’s corpse at my feet. A gaping wound rips through his stomach, fresh and still wet with thick blood—it is very likely that Achilles made that wound. Even without the pallor of death, he’d have been a pale man, and his wide eyes stare up and up. His red-brown curls are thick and matted, his mouth open and drooling blood onto the scruff on his chin. A Trojan, of course.

“You get away from him.”

I startle.

He jerks forward. “I said you get the  _ fuck  _ away from him—“

“Ay!” I raise my shield just in time to block his strike. The force of it hits me hard. He’s aiming to kill, not to torture. “Do not,” I spit. 

“He’s my  _ philtatos!” _

I pause.

I step aside. He falters, staring up at me. He comes up to only my nose, I realize, as we stay in that strange standoff. I’d been distracted by the massive weight on slumped shoulders, the stern expression smeared with gore and grime, and the gleaming swordpoint. But he is  _ youthful _ , even more than someone like Achilles or me. He has to be at most nineteen.

Achilles was only seventeen when we came to Troy. He was deluded then by men chanting his name and the prospect of kings at his feet — he still is, I think, but in a different way. This soldier’s face is not that of someone who thinks there is a good end to this. He looks cracked open, pained and torn, fresh like a new bloody wound. He catches my gaze prying and shuts off, pulling up a cool but trembling mask.

I stare at him. Who fooled this boy into coming to war? Who was his Odysseus?

“I’m sorry,” I finally say. 

“No, you’re not. He would’ve killed you.” He spits at my feet. I should rile back, but I can’t bring myself to, faced with grief that crashes like a tidal wave. “Not like it was you anyway.” His eyes cut at Achilles’s form far away.

I don’t know if it’s kind or cruel to answer,  “Not sorry for him. Sorry for  _ you _ .”

His eyes widen like he’s been struck. When he tries to still his stormy face this time, it doesn’t quite work. “What the hell would you know?”

I think of Achilles. Though I try to tell myself to keep still, my eyes follow his path of destruction in the distance. He is beautiful as I have ever seen him, golden hair and armor flashing with every flick and twist of his spear, spattered in grime and blood and gore. I think something strange in him was uncovered when he, wrapped tightly in my arms, stopped lamenting the death of every husband, brother, and father and began enjoying them instead. It was not bad. I didn’t feel guilty either, and I was glad to see that weight lifted from his shoulders. Now, though, I keep a fearful eye on his ever-growing frenzies and I watch for Hector here, Hector there, is that body on the other end of his spear Hector? 

He has been careful for many years now, and he must slip up eventually.

Part of me thinks that it’s foolish to hold Achilles to such a human standard — he is  _ Aristos Achaion _ , greatest of Greeks. He would not  _ slip up _ .

The soldier at my side, staring at Achilles just as I do… he has awoken that kind of fear. There has been the sensation of priceless time rushing past us for so long that I had almost grown numb to it, and I think,  _ It has been too many years. This war is bound to end soon. Achilles’ life is bound to end soon _ .

He misinterprets the look in my eyes as I watch Achilles. “But you are a  _ Greek _ ,” he says with sudden, deep horror.

I shake my head. It is a little terrible of me to be so vague to a boy grieving, but if I told him the truth he’d spear me through before I could take a breath. After all, Achilles slaughtered his  _ philtatos.  _ If I could kill the man who would kill Achilles, I would do it a hundred thousand times, and it would still not be enough—the thought of his lively leaf-green eyes gone cold and blank is all-encompassing and awful and far, far too much.

“I understand,” he mutters. He does not, of course. “I am sorry.”

I smile sadly. “I should not be the one being pitied.” No matter what, Achilles isn’t dead yet, even though it looms closer by the day. The soldier nods sharply.

I kneel down, touching the dead man’s cool skin. His rust-colored curls sweep across his forehead, eyes still staring off at nothing. 

The soldier sighs heavily. “It is the death he wanted, I suppose.” He kneels at my side and gently cups the man’s cheek. He looks at me. “Killed at the hands of  _ Aristos Achaion _ . An honor, right?” He laughs with no humor. “I will tell them he is a hero. That he stood for longer than all the rest.”

I hum. “It is not a bad lie.”

“No. No, I suppose not.”

He ducks his head and blinks quickly. A tear still slips down his cheek, shining bright against dirt-stained skin.

I have no right to touch him, but I do, setting my hand on his shoulder. He turns his face away but leans into my grip, shaking almost unnoticeably with grief. In the distance, swords and shields clash, men holler, feet pound hard against the plains, and there is sometimes the sickening  _ thump  _ of someone’s body falling to the ground. The air is thick and heavy with the scent of sweat and death. Somewhere there’s a pause in the action and then a loud, swelling cheer. A victory. I don’t look. I stay here, in the middle of a field of death and decay, a Greek and a Trojan stranger sharing grief over a man one of them never knew and one of them adored.

No one pays us any mind.

“Attikos,” he finally says.

“Your name?”

“Yes."

A pause. “Patroclus,” I offer.

Attikos lifts his head with an unreadable expression on his face. His eyes search the fields around us—he has heard of Achilles and I being associated, I think, but to what extent I don’t know, and by now Achilles has pushed far into the Trojan lines anyway. Whatever Attikos finds in his searching gaze isn’t enough to make him want to push me away. He jerks his head down at the soldier before us. Sounding terribly stricken but sure as can be, he says, “He was Chrysanthos.”

I give a certain nod. "A handsome name.”

“Yes.” Attikos leans back, turning his eyes to the sky and the Gods above, staring just as Chrysanthos’ cold eyes do. “Yes, it is.” He smiles, tears in the corners of his eyes. An odd sight.

“A warrior?”

Attikos laughs sharply. “In times like these, who is not,” he says. “He was extremely skilled, though. Brutal. But again, so are all of us.” He shrugs. “Before the war… they were sure when he grew that his beauty would rival that of Ganymede. Even when Prince Paris came to us, there were whispers about how my Chrysanthos was just as skilled and beautiful as he.” He strokes a hand through the rust-colored hair. “But then the war came, and all those rations and you Greeks laying siege. He never really became as gorgeous as everyone thought.”

I narrow my eyes. “Quite rude,” I say with no real bite.

“He liked honesty. Yea, I told him, ‘It’s better that you are not too gorgeous, for then you know I love you for who you are.’ Though none of us are gorgeous anymore but the princes, he liked that very much.” Attikos chuckles, but his voice is strained and pulling and when he laughs it catches a little, on the verge of tears. “We were evenly matched in combat, him and I. I suppose it is good you had  _ Aristos Achaion  _ here to defend you.” His voice sours fast with anger, biting sharp at no one in particular. 

There is a bitter taste in my mouth. I imagine the cold, lifeless corpse as a joyful, fast-moving man, pale cheeks flushed with pleasure as he spars Attikos, evenly matched and grinning. I remember when I used to spar with Achilles: I would always lose, but it felt good, as though being within his presence was a victory. There is a long stretch of silence, and Chrysanthos’ corpse is still unmoving, cold.

What am I saying — dead. He is dead.

Attikos heaves a low, heavy sigh.

“It has been nice to speak to you, Patroclus. You have been merciful for an Achaean. But I am being far too disrespectful to my  _ philtatos _ .” There’s a shining behind his eyes that glints meaningfully when he says, “Do you understand?”

I do not. But I will, one day, when Achilles will die and I will have to give him proper rights and watch his beautiful body burn to ash, so I say, “Of course.”

He stands, nods sharply at me, and sweeps Chrysanthos’ body into his arms. Attikos brings his beloved's face close to his own, resting Chrysanthos’ head comfortably on his shoulder. I feel as if I am intruding by looking upon it. Could you not see below the chest, you’d assume that they were lovers coming back from a swim or a spar, but the gaping wound in Chrysanthos’ stomach remains. Attikos should get a shroud so that he will not be attacked, and even then, it’s terribly risky to try and bring a body home in the middle of battle, and men usually wait until a side comes to a temporary victory. Then again, if it were Achilles in my arms…

His eyes drift shut as he touches his forehead to Chrysanthos’, and he breathes in gently. I cannot tell what it means to him.

I send a prayer to the gods that he gets to Troy safe. 

And to him, I say, “Good luck, Attikos.“

Attikos nods. He leaves without much fanfare, marching off to return to Troy. I do not see him again.

I settle back onto my haunches, suddenly very aware of the deep bruise starting to form on my waist from the Trojan who hit me. I do not remember who it was, and I ignore the pain, getting to my feet. Through my armor, I cannot touch it to judge the severity, and I tuck the thought of the throbbing pain away to rejoin my comrades. 

When I arrive (on the verge of fainting, having sprinted with that damn wound), I hear a shout and Achilles suddenly grabs my arm. His eyes are blazing — a man in a frenzy. “ _ Patroclus _ ,“ he says, tight and frightened in a way I have not heard in years.  “Where did you disappear to? This is a war, you cannot just  _ vanish _ .“ He tightens his grip on me as if he fears I will slip away from him. 

“My fault. I was injured, I did not tell you.“

He tenses, his expression still cool but burning with fury and fear under its surface.

“You killed all of them.“ I do not say it accusingly. It is just a fact, after all, even though the thought of Chrysanthos digs into my stomach like a knife. He relaxes, but still glances up and down at my body, full of tension. I continue, “I only realized when I put weight on my leg. It will not be too terrible.“

He does not relax. “Do not disappear, Patroclus,“ he says, and it sounds like begging.

It is another day of him cutting down bodies in a circle around me. My hands are cold and clammy around the sword hilt, and the Greeks eventually claw their ways to a victory. The Trojans retreat, chased off, and I return to the camp as I always do, but I do not feel much of it. I collapse into the bed and Achilles eventually follows.

“Patroclus,“ he says to me, pressing a kiss behind my ear.

I close my eyes and say, “Achilles,“ my heart pounding like a drum. He curls against my back and lays an arm around my waist. As always, he seems to know what I am feeling, and comforts me with his quiet presence. He grounds me, I think.

When I fall asleep, I dream of a boy with sharp blue eyes and a laughing pale boy, giddy with the thought that he will be the most beautiful man in town one day.

In the grand scheme of things, it is very insignificant. We fight, we kill, Achilles kills more. I work in the medical tent, binding wounds and cutting out arrowheads. Most nights I fall asleep evenly, sure that tomorrow will be another day of exactly the same thing. Some nights I do not, haunted by boys in apple trees, on mountains, sparring, bathing in rosy-fingered Dawn’s light. Most of the time, they are Achilles and me; s ometimes, they are not.

I forget a little about Attikos as days turn into years. The shade of blue of his eyes, what the armor he wore looked like, how long we sat there with Chrysanthos’ body as carnage raged so very near us. Then again, no matter how much time passes: they stole a little bit of me that I do not believe I can ever recover.

I never tell Achilles.

I am not a very pious man. But once or twice, I sit and pray for the four of us.

**Author's Note:**

> yall remember how patroclus has sex with deidameia and then it has like. no effect on the plot but it kind of changes patroclus himself? ya this has a. similar tone i think. sometimes shit happens in life for no reason and you have no choice but to move on but like. it sticks with u
> 
> maybe ill write more of attikos and chrysanthos but probably not. i think they represent ideas more than people but maybe thatll change!


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